Zbigniew
Herbert (1924 -1998), fighter in the Polish Resistance
during World War II, is perhaps the most philosophical and
intellectual poet of the Polish Great Three.
His work, especially his famous Cogito cycle, was certainly
worth another Nobel Prize. It is, sadly, too late for that now:
Herbert died recently, after a long and debilitating disease, in a
Warsaw hospital. Involved, in his last years, in a bitter (political,
not poetical) argument with Milosz on the limits of collaboration and
resistance with the communist regime, and on the effects of 50 years
of totalitarianism on the Polish society and its morality, he came
under heavy fire from the Polish left and its allies. None of this
criticism ever touched his poetry, of which he remains an unchallenged
master. For Herbert's is probably the clearest expression of his
nation's experience presented, in his poetry, with a "historical
irony." He often blends it with Classical imagery, a logical
consequence of his extensive Humanist education, and with a view of
history as more than "just a senseless repetition of crimes and
illusions."